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Asking For Verifiable Proof

Why is it unreasonable to ask for verifiable proof of God’s existence? If I said that Zeus was the one true god, you would be asking me for evidence of my claims. Why is your religion any different?

For any Christian who has ever said or thought that atheists are stupid: SHOW ME PROOF. Until you do, you’re laughing at me for not believing in your mythology- because without hard evidence, that’s all it is.

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10 thoughts on “Asking For Verifiable Proof”

You seem to just be flooding your blog with every atheist cartoon and crack. Its hard not to just write it off as the blog of someone who really doesn’t want to engage with people, but instead just wants to yell a bunch of stuff at the interwebs.

I have been enjoying some good conversations as a result of my posts; I’m quite happy with the results thus far. This is my personal blog and I post things that I find interesting, sometimes I post a lot of them at once if I’ve got a free afternoon. If you dislike the volume of my posts or the content, then why follow me?

I’d encourage you to read the conversation thread on one of my recent posts, I addressed a similar comment and the result was a very enlightening conversation, it’s on the Greek Myths meme post.

I think your a smart and considerate blogger, thats why I was following you blog. I was just afraid that you were going to start posting tons an tons of atheist propaganda regardless of whether you really think that way. You know lots of atheist sites do that. Some don’t even allow comments!

I just post things that I find interesting- plain and simple. 🙂 I will always allow comments unless the system is abused by trolling and I can’t manage it with the moderation system. But I doubt that would ever happen; my blog isn’t exactly first in the line of fire.

Many religions believe their gods or holy texts offer provable predictions even today, Christianity is not unique in this. I don’t think any of them actually offer real fulfilled prophecies, including Christianity. That’s a huge subject, so I’d encourage you to study it out for yourself. Here’s a video that very briefly addresses a few of the many problems with Biblical “prophecy”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjp_wET1pfs

Yes, I studied Daniel and Revelation in depth when I attended Bible college. But there are still problems, even with those prophecies. This link goes into much greater detail, http://infidels.org/library/modern/chris_sandoval/daniel.html, but here are my more general problems with Daniel and Biblical prophecies.

1. What effect did the prophecy itself have on those future events? (eg people acting in a certain way because it was foretold that they should. Often this is not consciously done.) The Bible itself admits that many of the “fulfillments” occurred so that the person would fulfill the prophecy- eg Jesus rode in on a donkey to fulfill that prophecy. Sometimes it’s on purpose, sometimes it’s unconsciously done. It’s like the Butterfly Effect- you have no idea how much the prophecy itself affects the future actions of people. With thousands of years for that prophecy to sink in to the minds of people who heard it, is it really that surprising that it might happen at some point in history, given enough time? We’ll never know. This is one of the biggest reasons why many people do not take prophecies seriously- there’s no way to tell how much effect the prophecy itself had on the events occurring. I would be more impressed if the prophecy had not been public, if it was secret and only revealed after the events took place. But even then it’s impossible to say whether the word could have leaked out. Again, the Butterfly Effect.

2. How do we know for sure that the book was actually written before the events took place? Do we have the original documents to verify their age? (The answer is no: http://www.gotquestions.org/original-Bible.html). To my knowledge, and I’ll admit my memory is a bit rusty, there is no way to verify 100% when those prophecies were actually written- we have to rely on the copies and assume that the people who authored the copies were honest and accurate.

3. Let’s say that the prophecies in Daniel are valid, just to give the benefit of the doubt. What exactly does that prove? It proves that the author, whoever he was, was able to predict something well in advance. That’s impressive, but it doesn’t mean it was a deity that did it. Ever seen a psychic at work? It’s quite amazing- but there’s nothing divine about it. Many smart people are able to predict things with no divine assistance. Also, you have to remember that Christianity is not the only religion or group that has predictive prophecies that are supposedly validated by scholars. If fulfilled prophecies are proof that a religion is true, then you actually have a serious problem because your religion is just one of many to claim this type of proof. Fulfilled prophecies are NOT direct proof of a god’s existence- at the most they are proof that there are some people with extraordinary abilities who claimed “god told them so”.

4. If the prophecies in Daniel are valid, that does not change the fact that many other prophecies in the Bible have failed. So what does that tell us? That they guessed a lot and got a few right? That some Biblical authors were more “inspired” than others? If you see it as book written by people, it makes perfect sense- but divine? Doesn’t seem likely. Even one failed prophecy- and there are many- should raise red flags about the infallibility of the book you’re basing your entire life on. http://www.goatstar.org/failed-prophecies/

There are many things we don’t understand fully. Prophecy is one of them. But that doesn’t mean god exists.

Thanks for your response. However, I have a couple of questions for you:

1) Daniel 2 predicts civilizations that would succeed each other. None of these civilizations were Judeo-Christian, and therefore none of them would have been influenced by a Jewish prophet, Daniel. Why should we think they’re self-fulfilling?

2. The New Testament wasn’t compiled until many years after the Roman empire destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Even if you’re right, Daniel 2 predicted the DIVIDING of Rome into 10 barbaric tribes, which became modern-day Europe. How do you reconcile this?

3. Can you point to a single so-called “psychic” prophecy that can predict entire civilizations to succeed each other? How about a single psychic prophecy that consists of anything more than the typical “fortune-cookie” prophecy? Please be specific, not general. Daniel 2 is specific.

4. Can you give me a “failed” prophecy of the Bible? There are some that are yet to be fulfilled, but I’m not aware of a failed one.

By the way, we can disagree on the other side of this discussion and still be friends, right? I don’t like making enemies over discussions. 🙂

The links I provided in my last comment go into more detail about Daniel and failed prophecies. Like I said, this is a huge topic. Of course we can disagree and still be friends. 🙂 I re-pasted the links here. They are by no means comprehensive, but they do cover some of the problems with prophecy in the Bible.

My point about the psychics is that people are capable of many things that some still mistakenly believe to be magical, mystical, or even divine. Just because something seems to be amazing and impossible at first glace doesn’t mean it is actually impossible.

As to the prophecies being in different parts of the world- word travels, especially among scholars, whom most ancient rulers consulted with. It’s not hard to picture ancient rulers being aware of that prophecy in other countries. Again, Butterfly Effect. I’m not saying that’s what happened in the case of Daniel, only that there’s no way to know what really happened.

If you were raised in another country, you would likely be defending a different religion with the exact same arguments, and you’d be just as certain of it’s inerrant truth as you are of this one. Religion is primarily cultural- that’s why the Middle East is mostly Muslim and America is mostly Christian. I’ve had many enlightening conversations with people of other religions and I’ve studied ancient religions (I love history), and it has shown me just how un-unique Christianity really is… even the virgin birth and savior from sin figure is not unique to Christianity.

I mean none of this offensively. I’m just trying to show you why I don’t put much stock in Biblical prophecy, even Daniel, and why I don’t consider it proof of god even if Daniel did predict it. I also don’t put much stock in the ancient Mayan prophecies, or any other prophecies that people talk about, because prophecy in general is a very tricky area that is not reliable. I will not base my entire belief system on the off-chance that a few prophecies might be right. I challenge you to check out the link with the failed prophecies and tell me how you can reconcile belief in an infallible Bible when those prophecies so obviously failed.

No trolling, please! Genuine dialogue for the purpose of mutual understanding is appreciated; debates are not. General comments are welcome. Cancel reply

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